Help desk
< March 21	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 23 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Help Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current Help Desk pages.

March 22[edit]

Template question: View & Talk links showing up red[edit]

I've create a new template: Template:Army_Group_Rear_Area_(Wehrmacht). However, the "V" (view) and "T" (talk) links are showing up as red, not blue. Not sure how to fix this. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:26, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It may be because the '(Wehrmacht)' is missing from the name parameter. Eagleash (talk) 00:32, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That was it! Thank you. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:34, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is this archive bot set up right?[edit]

I just set up a new archive bot to replace the old one, but so far nothing has happened. Can someone with more experience please check to see if it is set up right? It's located at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia ThatGirlTayler (talk) 00:48, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@ThatGirlTayler: The archiving bot only runs once a day so give it time. Come back in a few days if it hasn't archived. I changed a couple of unreasonable parameters but they probably wouldn't have prevented archiving. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:33, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: Thank you so much!! I Really appreciate it. ThatGirlTayler (talk) 02:14, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

2017-18 NBA team season template[edit]

Can You move the template from the talk to draft. 68.102.39.189 (talk) 01:16, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How to flip tabes[edit]

Does anyone know how to flip the tables at National Football League Coach of the Year Award. I want the oldest year to come first. Currently, the most recent year comes first. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:29, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think the tables are 'sortable', so if you click the arrows they reverse the order; so it is up to the reader how they display. Or have I misunderstood the question? :P Eagleash (talk) 02:40, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That is the way I want them to display but I want to display that way withing having to click the table. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:47, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Mobile users and users without JavaScript don't have sortable tables. And sortable tables initially display in the source order. This initial order cannot be changed. The source code has to be reversed. I don't know whether there are useful tools to help with this. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:49, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Copy the table to an excel document, reorder the document in the way that you want and use a tool that converts excel tables to wikitables.Naraht (talk) 04:02, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sent emails?[edit]

Is it possible to check whether you've really sent an email using the Wiki email function? I (think I) sent one yesterday, and expected a response by now - but nothing as yet. So I'm wondering if I closed the page accidentally before it was sent, but can't find an equivalent to an "outbox" or "sent items". Chaheel Riens (talk) 09:00, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This won't solve your current problem, but for future use, there's an option in Preferences to send you a copy, when you send an email to someone else. - X201 (talk) 09:09, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ordinary users cannot see later whether they have sent a mail. The email form displays MediaWiki:Emailpagetext which says: "A private log will record that your e-mail has been sent, and this log can be inspected by certain privileged users in order to prevent abuse. This log does not identify the recipient, title, or contents of your email (though in cases of extreme abuse, Wikimedia Foundation staff can verify the recipient account)." PrimeHunter (talk) 11:25, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, should it not be possible to request a CU verification? If Chaheel Riens sent only one or a few email(s) that day, it would answer the question. Unless the account has been hacked I fail to see how such a confirmation could be a breach of privacy. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 12:02, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt a CheckUser would use sensitive tools when the user can just send a new mail to be sure. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I did in the end. I just sent it again - and received a response within an hour. Not sure what happened before, but it must not have been sent, or I closed the window too soon, etc. Chaheel Riens (talk) 17:50, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unequal babel links[edit]

Our Tetrarchy article (covering the period of Roman history) has a babel link to the de:Tetrarchie article (covering government by four people), but the de:Römische Tetrarchie article (covering the period of Roman history) has a babel link to our Tetrarchy article. How is this possible? I thought Wikidata links required parallelism: if en:A links to de:A, de:A must link to en:A and cannot link to en:B. Nyttend (talk) 12:26, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The link from de:Römische Tetrarchie is not made through Wikidata, but with a manually inserted [[en:tetrarchy]] at the foot of the page. As you say, Wikidata works only with one-to-one mapping; hence it doesn't cope in the frequent cases where the breakdown and scope of articles is different between different language Wikipedias. This is one of the serious weaknesses of Wikidata. --David Biddulph (talk) 12:35, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) They are called interlanguage links. WP:BABEL is something else. de:Römische Tetrarchie has [[en:tetrarchy]] in the wikitext so the link is not made with its Wikidata item (Q15733698). A wikitext link will override an existing Wikidata link or in this case add a link to a language not in the Wikidata item. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:41, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User:PrimeHunter explained above how it is possible. Another question is, how could it be resolved? Actually it can't, because many Wikipedias have a single article about a Diocletian's tetrarchy with some general notes about the form of government, and only a few have separate articles about each. Compare Wikidata resources d:Q174450#sitelinks-wikipedia and d:Q15733698#sitelinks-wikipedia. --CiaPan (talk) 14:44, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

new listing[edit]

I'd like to have a listing/page for the Independent school I work for. Is that possible? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ckleefman (talk • contribs) 15:54, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ckleefman:That depends on a lot of things. First off, since you work for the school, you have a conflict of interest and ideally you should not write or edit any article about the school. Second, the way you phrased your question, saying, "I'd like to have..." could indicate that you don't understand that no one owns a Wikipedia article, it isn't your article. Third, whether or not a topic, such as a school, is appropriate for a Wikipedia article depends on if it meets the notability requirments; in this case the school-specific notability guideline. These guidelines can best be summed up with the question, "has (the school) been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources?" If so, then yes, it can be the topic of a Wikipedia article. If not, then no, it cannot. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:12, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@ONUnicorn: I would think the most simple interpretation of "I would like to have an article about X" is "I would like Wikipedia to have an article about X" (...but I do not care who writes it). You did put your second point in conditional form, but it still seems a bit bite-y. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 17:33, 22 March 2017 (UTC) [reply]